173 quotes
I will now confess my own utopia. I devoutly believe in the reign of peace and in the gradual advent of some sort of socialistic equilibrium.
The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
The war-party is assuredly right in affirming and reaffirming that the martial virtues, although originally gained by the race through war, are absolute and permanent human goods.
The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
Truth lives, in fact, for the most part on a credit system. Our thoughts and beliefs 'pass,' so long as nothing challenges them, just as bank-notes pass so long as nobody refuses them.
Pragmatism: A New Name for Some Old Ways of Thinking (1907)
As the brain-changes are continuous, so do all these consciousnesses melt into each other like dissolving views. Properly they are but one protracted consciousness, one unbroken stream.
The Principles of Psychology (1890)
All the higher, more penetrating ideals are revolutionary. They present themselves far less in the guise of effects of past experience than in that of probable causes of future experience.
The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
A paradise of inward tranquility seems to be faith's usual result.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
A difference which makes no difference is no difference at all.
William James: The Essential Writings (1971)
Instinct leads, intelligence does but follow.
Statement of 1902 quoted in The William James Reader (2007)
We are spinning our own fates, good or evil, and never to be undone. Every smallest stroke of virtue or of vice leaves its never so little scar. ...Nothing we ever do is, in strict scientific literalness, wiped out.
The Principles of Psychology (1890)
By being faithful in my poor measure to this over-belief, I seem to myself to keep more sane and true.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
This seems to me the first conclusion which we are entitled to draw from the phenomena we have passed in review.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
The community stagnates without the impulse of the individual. The impulse dies away without the sympathy of the community.
Act as if what you do makes a difference. It does.
This life is worth living, we can say, since it is what we make it, from the moral point of view.
The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (1897)
Science... has ended by utterly repudiating the personal point of view.
The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902)
For the moment, what we attend to is reality.
The truth remains that, after adolescence has begun, "words, words, words," must constitute a large part, and an always larger part as life advances, of what the human being has to learn.
Talks to Teachers on Psychology and to Students on Some of Life's Ideals (1911)
Democracy is still upon its trial. The civic genius of our people is its only bulwark.
Memories and Studies (1911)
It would seem that common sense and reason ought to find a way to reach agreement in every conflict of honest interests.
The Moral Equivalent of War (1906)
In my individual heart I fully believe my faith is as robust as yours.